We frequently field calls from new clients who are calling us because they just lost all of their data due to a hard drive crash, laptop theft, or even the occasional natural disaster (ie. Flood, Tornado, or Fire). Since data loss is very preventable; we constantly try to educate clients on ways to avoid it. If you do not have a backup strategy in place today, please implement one immediately upon reading this article. It is only a matter of time before it will happen to you, if it hasn’t already. I’ve listed key components that everyone should consider or include in a backup strategy. This article is mostly geared towards the smaller organizations of the Small-to-Medium Business (SMB) range.
Major Components of a SMB Backup Strategy
“To Err Is Human” – The first line of defense against what I refer to as the “Oops Factor”. In my experience, a major portion of data loss is due to someone deleting the wrong thing accidentally. There are tools built into Windows 7 to help with this, but the best recovery strategy is having a backup to restore files from. File loss can range from a single file, spreadsheet or email being accidentally deleted to a whole directory of important files. There have been countless times that our cloud-based data-protected clients have called us to restore key files and or emails.
“Planning for Business Continuity is Smart” – The buzz phrase of the last few years has been “Business Continuity”. If you’ve had anyone sell you on a hosted application or cloud computing, you’ve undoubtedly heard this term. It is referring to the ability for your business to continue operating without requiring a specific physical structure (your current store front or office location) or physical hardware/software. Incorporate fully or partially a cloud-based backup strategy for key business data, so business can continue to run when disaster or failure strikes.
“Know the Limitations of Your Key Applications” – A thorough knowledge of key business software applications should be factored into any backup strategy. Certain applications, especially database driven ones, may require special steps to be properly backed up and restored. In other words, just backing up the physical files might not be enough. QuickBooks is a good example of this. Just backing up the “quickbooks folder” isn’t sufficient. You need to export backup jobs from within QuickBooks that then get backed up offsite for full protection.
“Servers Require Special Care” – If your company is running on a server(s), then additional steps many need to be taken to properly backup everything. This can range from a system state file to the Exchange store and log files. Typically, special plug-ins or software add-ons are required. The echopath solution is Exchange aware as well as being able to handle major databases. These are key requirements in our opinion.
In Review
We will admit that more and more people are growing aware of data loss and the fact that it is a very real threat to business and even our personal lives. All data loss can’t be avoided, but at the very least its impact should be minimized with a solid backup strategy. If you do not have a good backup strategy in place, then please make one today. If you own or operate a business, then ask a cloud-based backup and recovery specialist such as echopath to help ensure your data and business is protected.